


London, Z-Anthea

by scuttlesworth



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-04
Updated: 2013-01-04
Packaged: 2017-11-23 16:30:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/624228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scuttlesworth/pseuds/scuttlesworth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All the broken people come to join things that are greater than themselves. Anthea never even knew loyalty existed, until Mycroft Holmes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	London, Z-Anthea

She is four. Her name is Zelda the Magnificent because her brother spends all his time playing Zelda on the grey box in front of the TV, and she wants to play too but can't. So he calls her little Zelda while she swooshes an imaginary sword around and he laughs. She has pale blond hair and chubby little fingers and no fear; she climbs on the cupboard door, swinging precariously, to get to the cookies. There's baggies in with the cookies but she ignores them because they don't look like food, all full of flour. 

She takes the cookies outside and picks up the bit of pink chalk she found on the crumbly black bitumen driveway. The grass is green but there's glass mixed into it from broken beer bottles; mummy said never play on it. She draws rainbows, and on the pavement every band is the pink. It's ok, in her head they're all different colors. 

 

Her name is Willemena and she is seven and a half and her brother smells bad and the other kids are mostly rotten but Jayden is nice sometimes so they play. When her brother's friends come over they smell bad too and smoke and drink and play different games. There are girls, nasty girls who look like feral cats or people on TV. They sneer and call her a little ankle-biter; she calls them fucktards, which she knows is a bad word, even if she isn't sure what it means. They laugh and leave and she cries. 

She hides in her room, on the fourth floor of a brick building near the train tracks, and hugs her stuffed dog. Someday she wants a real dog, but then she thinks about where she'd take him to play and run, and all the needles lying around on the ground, and thinks maybe he's better off with some other family someplace nice. Where there's sheep and flowers and kids who play ball. Not here. She falls asleep and dreams of clouds scudding overhead, flashing blue sky between them as they pass. 

 

Her name is Starling and she lives on the sixteenth floor of Balick Tower. She wears mostly black and heavy makeup and she is thirteen but tells everyone she is fifteen, and they believe it. Jayden wears all red because she can, because red looks good on her instead of making her look all ugly, and they go around together. Jayden is fourteen and says she's seventeen, and they believe her too. 

She's gotten little boobs now and wears her clothes to show them off. People look. Boys look. Sometimes she lets them touch, because their hands are warm and she feels excited and exciting. Jayden sometimes acts all mysterious and says she's seen a boy's penis, but laughs and refuses to talk about it more than that. Jayden's kind of a bitch these days. The boys like her better because she has bigger boobs. Starling says it's not about size, but still. 

Her brother is somewhere, in prison, for drugs. Been there for ages. She doesn't talk to him and has no idea how long he'll be there. In her pocket she carries a knife she found in his room. He left; it's her knife now. She smokes whenever she can steal a fag. She's a damn good thief; everyone's too busy trying to play it cool when she rubs her new boobs on their arms to notice her hands in their pockets. Jayden's a terrible thief. She always gets caught because she has clumsy hands, so Starling shares. 

 

Her name is Louise and she is sixteen and in a small concrete room that has been painted pale blue, like the color they call robin's egg blue but she's never seen an egg that didn't come from ASDA or Waitrose. They made her scrub the makeup off her face. She feels naked, exposed to the world. Eggs come in different colors, she thinks, curled up against the wall, staring at the places where hundreds of girls before her have scratched things into the paint. She tries to imagine eggs in different colors but can only see plastic Easter eggs, Cadbury eggs, cracked and stinking rotten eggs splatted on the hoods of cars. A cracked and bleeding skull on the pavement, her brother's shorn-short hair showing his pale scalp and his scalp ripped back to show skull and skull all broken to show the insides, like an egg. 

Humpty Dumpty, she thinks, he had a fall too. And there's other eggs than the ones you can see. They did a pregnancy test for those. Made her pee in a cup while they watched. She did it like a show, but nobody here seemed to care. So she threw it at them. Still, they said there wasn't going to be a baby, so she must have left enough to test. She wonders how you test for that. Are there tiny babies in the piss? Do they float around, smelling like powder and poop? Jaden had a baby last year. They don't talk much anymore but she went to see, after, and Jaden was sitting there holding it and smoking and staring down at the little thing, and something in her expression made Louise want one too. But there won't be one, not now. She's glad. 

There are bruises on her arms from her brother's fingertips. She runs her own fingers over them, but bruises are just colours; there's nothing to feel. She thinks of twisting against his grip and shoving, that angry moment when she knew exactly what she was doing, and wanted it. Wanted him dead. But every moment moves on. Water drips, second hands tick, and emotions vanish. She thinks she ought to feel bad about what she's done. They certainly expected her to start crying. They don't know her very well. 

The girl in the bunk above her hangs her head over the side. She can see the shadow on the wall. "Hey," says a voice, and she smells shampoo. "My name's Victoria. Like the spice girl, you know?" 

Louise curls up into a tighter ball and tries to shut out the world. 

 

Her name is Jane and this time there is no getting out. No-one will look at her this time in court and think her sad, small, sweet, salvageable. Nobody will care that this waste of breath raped and murdered Vi; Vi was street trash, a prostitute. This guy was a fine upstanding citizen. And Jane, well. These days Jane is not pitiable. Too many prior convictions. Eighteen is too old to forgive and forget. 

She sits next to the body and smokes a cigarette while she listens to the sirens pull up outside. She eyes the back of his head, the thinning hair, and contemplates her future. She expects it to involve about two days of trials, a day of processing, a couple days of murder, and then a long stretch of years staring at concrete walls. 

It's not a bad life. Could be better, but all in all, not bad. 

 

Her name is Anthea and she is sitting in the back of a car, a posh car like nothing she's ever seen in her life, next to a man with a rich suit and rich fat belly and rich umbrella and rich aftershave and starving-wolf eyes. They are driving on the M1 past flat farms and ugly buildings, away from London. He looks like one thing, smells like it, walks and talks like it, but underneath he is something completely different and Anthea is terrified of him. Practically pissing herself on the leather seat while he sits there and doesn't look at her. 

He walked into the yard looking like he was walking down one of the high streets, window shopping, and she saw him and thought, predator. No reason why, she just knew. Then matron came and told them to line up and they did, they all did, catcalling and trying to get his attention and telling him they'd shag him silly, and he smiled, and cold water flushed through her veins where she stood in line. She kept her mouth shut. He walked past her and then came back and pointed at her with the umbrella, and she thought I'm dead, and he said "This one." Then he walked off and they pulled her aside, gave her clothes, shoved her out the door. 

Out the door. She's got imprisonment for public protection, that's the rest of her life in that cell, and this man comes and points and they shove her out the door. And now she's in a car and he says, "Your name is Anthea now and it will be the last name you will ever have. From Zelda to Jane, all your other names are dead." 

She doesn't even ask how he knows about Zelda. Nobody knew about Zelda except her brother and her brother is dead, all the king's horses and doctors couldn't put him back together, but here's one of the king's men here staring at her like a shark looks at tender feet dangling down from the surface. She thinks, dead. All dead. 

Zelda. Willemena. Starling. Louise. Jane. All the other names, the temporary names, all the dreams. All the bits and pieces of TV shows and movies she's grown up looking at through glass. All the things she's never had. All the things she wants. Anthea. She wonders who Anthea is. 

Only one way to find out. So she takes a breath and stops huddling in the corner and looks at him, looks around, and shrugs. "Hello, my name's Anthea. What's yours?" And she smiles, a sly smile, and he smirks back at her and nods. 

"Mycroft Holmes. I am your employer. From this moment on you will work for me. You will do as I say, when I say, where I say, without question or hesitation." He gives her a moment to adjust to that. "Any objections?" 

Anthea ponders the statement. Freedom, she thinks. Looks out the window. Wonders what she'd do if she were dropped off here. Where she'd go. There isn't any place; she doesn't even know what towns they've passed through. Can't think of anyone else who wants her. No cash, no family, no friends, no life to go back to. Nothing but the world. She can try it on her own, or she can see what's going to happen now. 

Someone else in charge of her life. Couldn't screw it up worse than she's screwed up on her own, not really. 

Her lips twist. "Sir." There's dark amusement in her voice. He snorts. She's been sitting here for a long time; her bum is going numb. She shifts on the seat, trying to find a spot that's not already dead. Eyes him, sitting there all composed, like pain would never dare come near him. "Where are we going, exactly, Sir?" 

He nods out the car window. There's a grey building in the distance. "You're going to school; I'm going to work." 

She looks at the grey building as they get closer. She's never seen anything so beautiful in her life. Never. It sits there, and the lawn is green and she knows there's no broken glass there, and she vows to walk barefoot over that green grass. There are windows, so many windows and none of them have bars over them, and the bloke trimming the hedge as they drive past is wearing clean clothing and there's a gun tucked under the back of his jacket, and she looks at the man sitting next to her. Mycroft Holmes. His eyes gleam darkly, lids drooping as he looks at her reaction. Like her reaction matters to him, like it's important. 

She's never been important. Never. 

She doesn't ask what she's going to learn or if they'll accept her. She's arriving at an armed compound in a car that smells like money, escorted by a shark; she'll learn whatever he wants her to learn, and if they have half a brain they'll accept whatever he wants them to accept. Instead, she merely nods. Doesn't speak, because her throat is all closed up like she's a little baby going to cry. 

Anthea, she whispers in her head. I'm Anthea. 

She lifts her chin and swallows. When the car pulls to a stop, she reaches for the door. He raises his hand, and she waits, wide eyed a moment and then pulling composure over her face like a mask; the driver gets out and opens the door for them. She stares. He lowers his hand and she stiffens her spine and gets out of the car. Looks up at the school. A laugh bubbles up in her throat, and she grins over her shoulder at her ride, then strides forward towards the door. 

Being Anthea, she thinks, is going to be amazing.


End file.
